Apple moves 320 spots, now 442nd biggest company in the world

Apple has increased their market value over 300% and profits over 250% in the …

Forbes has put out its annual Top 2000 report, ranking the 2,000 biggest companies in the world. One of the most notable improvers from last year's report is Apple Computer. Last year, according to the Forbes report, Apple ranked just 762nd and this year sits at 442nd. Why the huge change in ranking?

Forbes ranks companies on four separate factors: sales, profits, assets, and market value. The reasoning behind this comes out in their succinct explanation:

How to measure the size of a business? Our rivals are enamored of single-dimension measures. Yet revenue alone is a silly way to rank companies. You wind up with a list in which the importance of retailers is not in proportion to their economic heft. Wal-Mart, first in sales, doesn't even make the Forbes Top Ten because it pockets less than 4 cents of every dollar. Citigroup, with less than half Wal-Mart's sales but 67% higher earnings, ranks first.

Although Apple increased dollar amounts in every category, the biggest factor contributing to Apple's skyrocketing rank is their change in market value. Apple's market value nearly quadrupled in the past year from US$8.5 billion to US$36.6 billion. Although smaller in the absolute sense, Apple increased their profits by 260% to half a billion dollars.

Even more interesting is an analysis of where Apple currently relates to other hardware and software companies in this new economy. The 800lb Gorillas are still the same, but the rank shuffling near the top is somewhat suprising — Microsoft lost 16 spots. MacNN shows Apple in front of big names like Sun, Yahoo and Google in their analysis:

HP trailed IBM (ranked 17th) with a distant 54th. Apple remains ahead of Sun, Nortel, Casio, and other hardware makers. Apple also ranked higher than Yahoo, Google and Adobe. Microsoft lead the Software category, but had fallen to 47th overall from 31st

Obviously, the main reason for this improvement is the smashing success of the iPod, iTunes Music Store and their fantastic stock performance. Whether or not the introduction of the Mac mini and further innovations will help maintain their momentum is still to be seen, but you can bet that Apple will continue their fight to remain popular culture's darling.